*** The economy is growing!!!
NYTimes:
....Gross domestic product expanded at an annual rate of 5.7 percent in the fourth quarter, after growing at an annualized rate of 2.2 percent in the previous quarter. Analysts had forecast annualized growth of 4.8 percent in the fourth quarter, and the better-than-expected result sent stocks higher Friday morning, though they fell back at midday.
The strong growth in the fourth quarter capped a year of the biggest contraction since 1946, when the country was still cooling off from World War II....
> There is even more good news from Reuters:The world's largest household products maker has been working to attract shoppers who had shunned its name brands such as Pampers diapers and Bounty paper towels for cheaper store versions as the recession took hold.
Profit was $4.66 billion, or $1.49 per share, in the fiscal second quarter ended December 31, down from $5 billion, or $1.58 per share, a year earlier. Analysts, on average, expected P&G to earn $1.42 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Shares of P&G were up 19 cents to $61 in premarket trade....
People are spending a little more money. Hopefully, this will translate into other areas of the economy.
>>>> I just found this article at the FreeLibrary about John Kasich and his "trickle down" economy:
...Persuading people that your story matches reality as they see it will do more to win their hearts and minds than all the charts, graphs, and statistics you can muster.
Congressman John Kasich, (R-Ohio), understands this. When he announced for president last month, he touted his 10-percent across-the-board tax cut not with investment models, but with an American tale of self-improvement. He did not deny the tax cut would be helpful to the rich. He did something unusual: He defended the rich....
...."You see" - Kasich loves us to see - "the people who are struggling every day in America, they realize that if a rich guy takes his money, invests it, creates a job - that I get the job. Then I go to college and I get smart, then I buy him out and he works for me. That's the way we see it in middle America." Only rarely does the story turn out exactly as Kasich tells it. But that's irrelevant - this is a parable. Americans do believe in upward mobility, even if it often takes a couple of generations to get there...